No leash. This episode was just lame all around. Not enough people to poke fun at.

A statement I would guess comes out of the mouth of someone who doesnt train.

I fight in MMA, albiet still amatuers. I’m 4-1 now after dropping my first via decision to a guy with 6 amatuer bouts to his credit. The last four wins have all come via sub or tap to strikes from the mount. Those are my qualifications, along with 16 years training military HTH, 10 in jujitsu, and 2.5 in muay thai.

I completely agree with Luke’s assessment, so if you dont buy his opinion, I suggest you buy mine. I know I know what I’m doing.

just my personal feelings.

The thing is…these guys haven’t fought infront of the camera…nervous take a factor in how you perform in front of millions of viewers. They were both gased out in the first round. War Machine had his hooks in from the choke, but Tommy struggled to get out of it and did so. They are both good fighters and they both deserve alot of respect from the MMA community.

also if you watched the fight…ic ould have swore that tommy tapped out from the choke while being on his side. Not sure if anyone else noticed that or not.

The only disagreement I have is that I don’t feel the UFC is trying to pass these fights off as A-level caliber. They are definitely, for the most part, entertaining but the point of the show is to “discover” an A-level fighter (or possibly two) who could possibly make it in the UFC.

Um, I have. A lot. A whole lot. You see, I trained and mount escapes is an important component of that. No one is saying it’s easy. What I’m saying is that escaping the mount – tired or not – requires certain fundamentals that War Machine wasn’t practicing. Making you tired doesn’t mean your memory is erased.

If someone is mounted on you, you should always be moving trying to shrimp your hips out. Always. Always keep moving your hips. The WHOLE POINT of the mount is to leave your opponent with no way to use their hips. When you move, that makes your opponent’s ability to stay on top that much more difficult. Moreover, you never actually SIT in mount. There should be distance between your ass and your opponents body because if you sit on them and they bridge, you stand a much better chance of getting bucked.

The key opportunity to escape the mount is when your opponent throws a punch. If you’re bridging he should come forward, allowing you just enough space to shrimp your hips out and recapture half if not full guard. Tommy was LITERALLY SITTING ON WAR MACHINE. Not only that, he was sitting low. A good mount is right up inside the arm pits. Tommy was leaning over to punch for crying out loud. I’m sure Tommy is strong as an ox, but from a technical level, mounts don’t get much easier to escape than that. War Machine could’ve given his back and it would’ve been better than what he was doing. Hell, roll to the side. At least from there you can tempt the arm bar and you stand a better chance of getting your hips outside.

Don’t lecture me on mount escapes unless you’ve done them yourself. I realize these guys on the show are young and just need some experience. I’m not saying they’re bad fighters, I’m saying they’re inexperienced and it shows. Either War Machine doesn’t know mount escapes (unlikely) or he abandoned them and spazzed out (more likely). Either way, that proves he’s young in the fight game AND that this fight was very short of anything approximating “technical”.

They both fought their hearts out and my hat goes off to them, but that doesn’t in and of itself make it a great or A-level fight. Gameness isn’t enough at the top.